


(three times 'cause)  i've waited my whole life

by amyscascadingtabs



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Bad Parent Roger Peralta, Emotional Baggage, F/M, Family Fluff, Father's Day, Father-Son Relationship, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Jake Peralta Needs a Hug, Parents Jake Peralta/Amy Santiago, Season/Series 07, look it's me being emotional about dad jake for 13k words, the spiritual sequel to sockfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:00:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26669359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amyscascadingtabs/pseuds/amyscascadingtabs
Summary: Jake has never been a fan of Father's Day. Never finding it more than the yearly nagging reminder of the brokenness of his own family, he's avoided any acknowledgement of the occasion for most of his life - but with fatherhood fast approaching, this attitude might use a change.A reflection on Jake's feelings about fatherhood, told over the course of three different father's days.
Relationships: Jake Peralta & McClane "Mac" Peralta, Jake Peralta & Roger Peralta, Jake Peralta/Amy Santiago
Comments: 31
Kudos: 98





	1. june 16th, 2019

**Author's Note:**

> i started writing this in june, and originally, it was planned for father's day, but then life happened and i dropped this project completely before realising in august that i still wanted to complete this. so i did. i know we're months away from father's day, but really, who needs a holiday to be emotional about dad! jake when you could just be it every damn day of the year, am i right or am i right? also, yesterday was national family day and today is the 5 year anniversary of new captain, so we'll pretend those count, too.
> 
> fic split into chapters for clarity and length, but you can easily press 'entire work' to read it all at once!
> 
> title from taylor swift's paper rings. i hope you enjoy ❤︎

**june 16th, 2019**

Jake is _not_ having a great Sunday.

First of all, he hates working Sundays. The weekend squad are somehow both dull and annoying at the same time, their coffee is never as good and it always seems to run out the minute he gets there. He wonders if they do it to him on purpose. 

Second, the series of burglaries he’s working with Charles is giving them dead end after dead end. He’s started questioning whether Terry gave it to them just to get back at Jake after he accidentally questioned whether some recent drawings by Ava really portrayed anything at all. In his defense, he just figured his goddaughter might be really into abstract art. 

Third, Amy’s not working today. 

She has more Sundays off than he does, and it never stops being physically painful to abandon their warm bed cocoon all too early in the morning, watching her pull the covers closer to her chin with a smug smile once he’s kissed her goodbye. Even though they don't even work on the same floor anymore, being at work without her never stops feeling wrong, like he could be doing so many better things with his time.

Finally, the ultimate fourth - he’s just been reminded that it's Father's Day. 

To say Jake doesn't have many fond memories of Father's Day is an understatement. He doesn't remember the ones before he turned seven, and after that point, the holiday always felt like a gut-punch when his dad chose to spend it either working or playing golf - which Jake would later found out meant having sex with another one of Karen’s friends - and in the evening, Jake would be forced to give him a card he’d barely wanted to buy in the first place. He supposes it should be easier now, with no one forcing him to celebrate Roger, but it’s not. If anything, it's worse to see everyone around him roll their eyes at how they have to remember to buy a gift or send a message to their fathers, when Jake can't shake the memory of the time three years ago he sent a _Happy Father's Day_ -text and got a “ _who’s this_?” in return. 

His thumb hovers over Roger’s phone contact as he waits for Charles outside the building they're doing door duty in today, but he doesn't do it. They’re doing better than they have in a long time, yet something is holding him back. 

Charles is a couple of minutes late, and Jake finds his explanation when he sees him arrive on foot with Nikolaj and Genevieve. Nikolaj is walking in between his parents, and Jake watches as they let him jump ahead and swing in between them in that way all children seem obsessed with. Nikolaj laughs, and Charles glows with pride in the way that only shows when he's with his son. Jake smiles and waves at them.

“So sorry we’re late,” Charles greets him once they’ve crossed the street. Jake just waves his hand dismissively - he’s never been the right person to judge others time-keeping skills. “You see, we wanted to get in an early Father’s Day breakfast before work, and then I lost track of time opening the gifts, and then Nikolaj asked if he could have dessert and because he had just gifted me the most _beautiful_ new spiralizer and a new recipe book for how to cook with sea urchin, I couldn't say no.”

“And I made a drawing!” Nikolaj chirps. “For Papa’s day! I made one for you, too!”

“Oh, wow, that's - you really didn't have to,” Jake blushes as Nikolaj pulls out a paper from his green backpack and hands it to him. 

On the top of the paper, it says _happy god-father's day_. There’s a tall building and a person jumping from it tied to a rope, and in a speech bubble it says in squiggly letters - _yippee kayak, other buckets_. 

Jake doesn't mean to tear up, but his eyes get a little misty anyway.

“Thanks, Niko,” he grins, and his godchild shines up. 

“I don't know what that movie’s about! But papa said you would be happy if I drew that, so I did! Do you like it?”

“I love it,” he assures him before folding it carefully in his pocket. “Charles, should we, uhm -”

“I’m just going to say goodbye to my family,” Charles nods. Jake optimistically expects a brief exchange, but instead he has to look away as the hugs and kisses exchanged between family members quickly turns into Charles and Genevieve making out. Jake coughs to remind them there are children present, and eventually, they break apart. Charles looks pained as the rest of his family walks away, still waving, but Jake is relieved. 

“So I take it you had a good morning?” He asks Charles as they tackle the stairs of the apartment building. They’re starting on the top floor and working their way down, and to make it all worse, a note in bold red letters stuck to the elevator doors has informed them it is out of function today. 

“Oh, it was nothing big, you know! The real celebration is after I finish work tonight.” Charles is keeping a brisk pace on the stairs. It’s like there’s an extra pep in his step today, and Jake is struggling to keep up. “We’re having dinner with my father at _Csaba_ , of course, to celebrate the excellence of Boyle men’s fatherhood. After that, Genevieve has promised to make love to me for at _least_ -”

“Sounds great, bud!” Jake half-shouts as he notices the two young children peeking out of a door on the next floor. 

“You’re invited!” His friend insists without seeming to notice the kids. “Well, to the dinner. Not to the following events.”

“Figured. Wait - why am I invited?”

“Well, my dad sees you as a son.”

“Which is _weird._ ”

“ - and I figured you didn’t have plans with your own dad. I know you hate Father’s Day, but I thought feasting on a plate of sausages together with us might brighten your spirits about it.”

“It definitely would not, but thanks. And I don't _hate_ Father's Day,” Jake remarks, panting as they reach the fifth floor. “It’s just overrated _,_ and it was always a shitty day growing up because my dad was never around, and fine, I guess I hate it, but that's my personal problem, okay? I don't need a pity invite.” 

“It's not a pity invite! Like I said, my dad -”

“Charles, I appreciate it, but please let me hate the day on my own.” Jake doesn't mean for his tone to get so sharp, but Charles looks taken aback by it as they stop on floor number six. He sighs. “I’m sorry.”

Charles gives him a halfhearted smile. “Someday, you’ll get it.”

“Stop,” he mumbles, forcing himself to keep quiet about the conversation he had with Amy after the manhunt two weeks ago. Charles can’t know they’re trying, Amy’s decided, and Jake gets it. As much as he’s bursting with excitement to tell his best friend about the decision, how dope but terrifying it is, he knows that if - when - he finds out, there’s an overhanging risk they’ll be drowning in unsolicited advice about diets and sex positions before they know it. While Jake thinks he could handle the intensity, he knows Amy would struggle. “Let’s get this door duty thing over with.”

Door duty, it turns out, gives them nothing. Each person they meet seem to give a different description of their perp, who is either caucasian or hispanic or according to an elderly man, _possibly just very tan_ , and is either in his thirties or his fifties or according to a young girl with round glasses half the size of her face, _maybe a time traveller._ Jake later discovers that Charles has written _time traveller?_ in his notes. There are five apartments on each of the six floors, and by the time they get to apartment number ten, Jake’s already bored. That’s not what frustrates him most, though. 

The more doors they knock on, the more obvious it gets that this is an apartment building filled with families, and somehow every one of them seems to be in the midst of their Father’s Day-celebrations. They knock on the door to at least five family brunches, three hallways with piles of wrapping paper, and two where they’re invited inside for a cup of coffee and pancakes. An elderly man asks if they can help him figure out how to video call his daughters, a single dad wants to show them the drawings his three-year-old daughter made, a man with a sleeping infant in a BabyBjörn asks, unprompted, if he can talk to them about the magic of fatherhood, and a father of two lively twins almost tries to close the door in their faces so he can get back to his breakfast. Jake wonders how not one unhappy family can seem to live in this building. Surely there’s something suspicious about it. They can’t _all_ be that happy, and he finds himself searching for imperfections, scanning the environment for signs of a broken family. Something about it rubs him the wrong way, but he can’t tell if it’s intuition or his least favorite emotion; jealousy. 

“It just seems too good to be true,” he mutters to Charles on their drive back to the precinct. “Somewhere in there is a broken marriage, I swear.”

“I thought they all seemed really lovely! Particularly the couple that offered us buttermilk pancakes. God, they smelled _delicious_ \- both the pancakes, and the couple! Did you notice his perfume? I should have asked him about it.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Agree to disagree.”

Jake rolls his eyes. “Either way, we didn’t get _any_ valuable information about our perp and whether he’s hiding out there, so, this was worthless. Useless informants, _and_ I had to open the door to like fifteen reminders of my own broken relationship with my dad. Real cool.”

“You don’t think you’re reading too much into it? I mean, a lot of those fathers were quite young, and you can’t judge someone’s whole life based on one Sunday morning. You might be projecting a little, you know.”

“I’m not,” Jake says, even though yes, he definitely is. 

“Offer to come along for dinner tonight still stands.”

“I’m still good, thanks.” 

They’re silent for the rest of the drive. Jake doesn’t say what he’s really thinking; that as much as he appreciates his best friend’s offer, celebrating Father’s Day with the Boyles would just be an even more agonizing reminder of Roger Peralta’s failures. 

The one thing that makes Jake willing to accept his Sunday shifts is the fact that they’re usually short. Today, he gets to leave at three, and he’s not embarrassed to say he practically sprints to meet Amy by the car. He’s missed her, damn anyone who says that makes him desperate or cheesy, and on days like today, he just needs her presence for a while until he feels good about himself and his place in the world again. 

She must be able to tell that he's had a rough day, because when he almost topples her with a hug on the spot, she doesn't seem shocked. She just squeezes him tight, stroking his hair as he sighs into the crook of her shoulder.

“You okay?” She asks, and he just mumbles,

“Am now.”

They're going to _Target_ , Jake finds out. They need groceries and apparently towels and some new dining tray Amy’s found, and because anywhere with his wife is better than anywhere without her, he follows despite knowing it means he’ll have to stare at the endless _Father’s Day_ -displays. They're the same every year, wanting him to buy t-shirts and mugs and fake trophy cups. They may be cringey, but Jake always gets jealous anyway. He wants to buy a stupid mug and a card and gift it to his dad as a joke, too, and he wants his dad to laugh and then use the mug every week anyway, and he doesn't want it to feel fake. 

Amy knows all that, so Jake doesn't talk about it. Instead, he tells her about Charles’ invite, and she scrunches her nose at the mention of sausage mountains.

“It's sweet that he invited you, though,” she says. “He knows you don't like the day and wants to help make it better. It's definitely weird, but it's sweet.”

“Yeah, maybe. Nikolaj gave me a Die Hard-drawing and said today is also Godfathers day. I think Charles told him what to write, but it was still adorable.”

Amy smiles. “I bet.”

“It made me think about whether our kids are going to like Die Hard,” Jake confesses. It’s still crazy to him that they're having these conversations now, talking about _their kids_ as people who will come to exist one day, but he finds that he really loves it. “Seven’s old enough to watch it, right?”

“Eleven minimum.”

“Hey, I was seven!”

“You’ll watch it with them behind my back no matter what I say, won't you?”

“Probably,” he shrugs. Amy shakes her head. “I’m excited for it, though. Do you think - for next Father's Day - you think we’ll have a baby by then?”

“If we’re lucky? Not impossible,” she says, and Jake grins.

Target is crowded with people doing their afternoon Sunday shopping, young couples pointing at items on sale in the interior design aisles and kids dragging their parents to the candy and snacks. Jake helps a boy, maybe three or four years old with red hair and freckles, reach the sour straws from a higher shelf, and then earns himself a hateful look from the child’s mother when she returns and tells her son he needs to put those back. The boy lets out a deafening growl before throwing himself on the floor, and Jake flees the site before he discovers whether looks can actually kill. 

He finds Amy at the feminine hygiene aisles, and is just about to ask her if they can get out of here for their own safety when he notices the dark pink box in her hand. She’s reading the back of it carefully, scrunching her forehead, and Jake’s heart does a nervous flutter when he reads the words _Early Detection Pregnancy Test._

“Uhm,” he says, losing his words as he points at the box. “That’s, uh -”

“A pregnancy test,” she shrugs, like it’s no big deal. “I thought I would keep a few at home, so I can test a few days ahead of when I should get my period.”

“Didn’t you just have it?”

“I did. I’m not taking it _today_ , I just thought I’d have a few at home for later.” Amy stands on the tip of her toes, kissing his cheek before placing the two-pack of tests in the cart. “You look nervous.”

“Just surprised,” he mumbles. “So we’re not finding out today, then?”

“Remind me to teach you more about menstrual cycles,” she laughs, and he blushes. “Jake, we haven’t even properly started trying yet. We’re not. I’m not. Yet, at least.”

“Yet,” he repeats, feeling the same nervous flutter again. “Would have been kind of funny if we’d found out today, though. Made it a less shitty father’s day and all that.”

Amy smiles. “That’s true. I might have something else that could cheer you up, though.”

“Like what?”

“Well, according to my period tracker, today is the start of my fertile window. So if we want to actually start trying, then…”

“We could start trying today,” he fills in, a little too loud and causing a young teenage girl grabbing a packet of condoms from the next shelf to give him an amused look. “Okay, that _does_ make me hate today less. Immediately let’s go home and do that. Also, I need to get out of this store before some random child’s mom hunts me down anyway.”

“Huh?”

“Long story,” he says, and then he tugs her arm lightly towards the self checkout machines, suddenly eager to return home.

He doesn’t really think about it during, but he thinks about it after. After, when they’re catching their breath and the sweat on their skin is cooling on the sheets, when his heartbeat is slowly regulating back to its usual pace, he looks over to Amy and thinks, _magic_ , this must be magic. They don’t even know if it’s worked yet, won't for at least a couple of weeks, and he’s not sure what the chances are for it working on their first attempt, but just the knowledge that they’re doing it - that they’re _trying to make a baby_ \- makes it uniquely special. It’s fresh and exciting and a little bit mind-blowing, and it’s daunting but amazing and he’s so _ready_.

“Feel pregnant yet?” He teases Amy, and she rolls her eyes, but she giggles. 

“Let’s say until proven otherwise.”

“Solid,” he yawns, throwing an arm around her warm body and pulling her closer to him. She rests her head on his chest with a relieved sigh, her legs slotting in between his. Jake wonders how it works that only minutes after being as close to her as he can physically get, he can crave this with her. Even on the worst days, this helps him feel whole. Not necessarily the sex, although it doesn’t hurt; but the intimacy, the striking reminder that this, next to her, is where he belongs.

“Are we going to know when?” He whispers, and Amy lifts her head to give him a questioning look. “Like, if we get pregnant, are we going to know what day it happened? So that if we _know_ it worked the first time, we can brag real hard about it.”

“No,” she says simply, and Jake pouts. “Maybe, if we only tried once. But we're doing this every day for the days of my fertile window to maximize our chances.”

“Cool.”

“But even if it’d only been once, sperm can live inside the uterus for up to five days. So, no. We would have to do IVF to know the exact date of conception. Any reason you're curious?”

“Just turns me on hearing you talk biology facts,” he winks, not entirely joking. “Plus I thought it would have been fun if we knew it had been on Father's Day.”

Amy hums, closing her eyes and pecking his chest with kisses. “I guess.”

“It's still a pretty okay one, though,” he thinks out loud, running his fingers through her thick, silky, hair. “This, you - made it better.”

“You're welcome,” she says, sounding pleased with herself. “Are you going to text your dad?”

“Amy,” he groans. “Don't.”

“Sorry. I thought it could be like a facing your fears-thing.”

“It's not a fear when your dad's just a jerk,” Jake mutters. “No. I don't think so.”

“Okay.”

“I know what might help make the day even better, though,” he says, and then he's kissing her like _that_ again.

“What?” She pants when they break apart for air. 

“Pizza and Die Hard,” he grins. She smacks him in the shoulder, but then she is kissing him back, giving his lip a little bite, and Jake thinks he's forgiven. 

He gets pizza and Die Hard on the couch later, too. He scrolls through social media while Amy’s in the shower, liking some of the Santiago brothers’ posts about the holiday and the twenty pictures Charles has uploaded, and then he opens the message conversation with his dad again. He writes out a simple _Happy Father’s Day_ , and he’s close to pressing send before he changes his mind and erases the sentence, double-clicking the home button and swiping up to close the app. It feels forced, and even if they’re building towards repairing their relationship, Jake doesn’t think he’s ready yet. 

Amy gets out of the shower, and it’s a relief to have an excuse to put his phone down as she brings out paper towels and they cut the pizza with scissors, splitting two different kinds between them. After, Amy reads a New Yorker-article on her phone while he plays with her hair and watches Bruce Willis on the screen at the same time, and Jake decides that as Father’s Day’s go, he’s had a lot worse. 

He wonders if it’ll be a brighter day next year. There’s a possibility, small but existing, that he’ll be celebrating this day with his newborn daughter or son by then. Father’s Day won’t just be another reminder of what he never had, because he’ll have his own family to celebrate with. 

Jake puts an arm around Amy, and hopes that will be the case. 


	2. june 21st, 2020

**june 21st, 2020**

It hits Jake as he’s in the middle of pouring different pancake toppings into bowls while two of Amy’s nephews are sticking their heads up over the counter to try and see what he's doing; this is the most he’s ever actually _celebrated_ Father's Day in his adult life. 

Luis Santiagos’ kitchen is crammed with Santiago family members, adults and children fighting for a place around the counters to help prepare a bountiful Father's Day-brunch. The kitchen table is quickly filling up with various plates of fruit, bread and pancakes while parents try to keep their kids curious hands from reaching for the food just yet. Camila, Luis, and Luis’ wife Emma are in charge of ordering people around, trying to overvoice the constant chatter and the odd scream from an infant, and Jake is jumping between stations trying to feel helpful without really succeeding.

Still, he's enjoying it. Everyone seems happy, five-year-old Mason has spent the morning telling him jokes that are actually funny, and when Jake first entered the kitchen, Julian flicked him in the shoulder and told him _Happy Father's Day, dude_.

(“Not yet,” he’d mumbled, and Julian shrugged.

“ _Details_. You’re a better father than Christian will ever be.”

“Julian, I’m going to fucking kill you -”

“Don't ruin the magic of Father's Day, Christian!”

“You're not even a dad!”

“I’m going to be a dog-dad! Choose your words carefully!” Julian shouted, and Jake had stood confused watching the two brothers before deciding that it seemed wisest to stay out of the conversation.)

He's helping Tony set the table when Camila taps him on the shoulder. After four years, Jake has figured out that the woman simply looks naturally terrifying thanks to her constant authoritative expression, that it’s not personal, but it still makes him nervous. 

“Jake! Do you know where Amy is?”

“Uhm, she’s still sleeping, I think.”

“Wake her up,” Camila tells him, “and tell her breakfast is in fifteen minutes.” 

“I thought she needed the rest,” he tries to defend his five-month-pregnant wife's new sleeping habits, but Camila waves her hand.

“She can rest later. Fifteen minutes!”

“Before you throw a pillow at me,” Jake says as he sneaks into the tiniest guest room he ever saw. He thinks it must have been meant as a closet. “Your mom is the one making me wake you up. It's her you should be mad at, not me.”

Amy yawns as he sinks down next to her on the air mattress. “What?”

“Brunch in fifteen minutes, your mom says you need to be there, don't shoot the messenger and I love you.”

“Mmph. Too early.”

“It’s nine-thirty.”

Her eyes fly open. “ _No_.”

“Yep,” he grins, stroking his hand over her ponytail. “Seems you're a person who likes to sleep in now.”

“It’s this baby’s fault I’m exhausted,” she mumbles, hand moving to the, now more than noticeable, bump under her t-shirt. “Not even born yet, and already stealing all my energy.”

“Ah, so my child through and through.”

“Hilarious. Cuddle with me for five minutes? I promise I won’t fall asleep again,” she says as she notices his skeptical expression.

Jake does a quick cost-benefit analysis in his head - Camila might be pissed, but it’ll technically be Amy’s fault too, and the sight of his wife with sleep-ruffled hair and an exaggerated pout on her lips is too adorable to decline - and moves closer. The air mattress dips, squeaking as he lays his arms around her, and Amy hums and nuzzles her nose into the crook of his neck. It’s so familiar, from the way her breath feels warm against his skin to the way her finger traces that specific route along his shoulder blades when she wraps her arms around him, but it’s also new. Where their bodies once used to line up almost perfectly against each other, there’s now a baby bump to adjust to, and he’s not quite gotten used to the change yet. 

“I felt little movements from them earlier,” Amy whispers, rubbing small circles with her palm to a spot low on her belly. “I’ve been feeling them for a few days now, actually.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. At first, it was just tiny flutters, but now, sometimes I think I feel it from the outside. I’m hoping that means you can feel them soon,” she says, giving him a glowing smile. “It’s really cool.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“Try here.” She takes his hand and guides it to where she held hers. He presses lightly against her skin with his index finger and middle finger, careful but curious, and tries to hide his disappointment when there’s nothing.

“Maybe they’re shy?” He suggests. Amy shakes her head.

“Or they’re still tiny and asleep most of the time. I’m sure you’ll feel it soon, babe.” 

“What size are they now?”

“We’re 20 weeks as of yesterday, so, six inches. Size of a banana, roughly.” She holds up her hands, measuring a distance between them before holding them over her belly. Jake tries to picture a baby of that size actually residing in there. Despite the ultrasounds and how he watches the bump grow on what feels like on a daily basis, it’s hard to make the connection. He understands the logistics of it, but the emotional aspect, that it’s really their son or daughter in there - it freaks him out a bit, even if in a good way. 

“Wild,” he says, lacking better words to describe it. Amy giggles and kisses him. 

It takes a stern warning from Camila outside their bedroom door for them to fly apart and remember the time pressure, but Jake and Amy make it perfectly on time for the brunch and gift-exchanging. Jake focuses on drowning his pancakes in syrup and powdered sugar, feeling like an outsider around the table as drawings and cards are exchanged between children and fathers. He’s not _really_ celebrating a father, nor does he feel like one; but he’s also not _not_ one. He’s somewhere in between, residing in a confusing father-limbo that leaves him wondering whether to embrace or deny the day. 

Part of him wants to embrace it, revel in the fact that he’s for-reals about to be a dad in a few months. Charles sends him a _Happy Father’s Day_ -text, complete with a picture of a new drawing from Nikolaj that he thinks is supposed to picture Jake and Amy with a small child in between them. He wonders if Nikolaj had the idea on his own or if it, like last year’s Die Hard-picture, was Charles’ suggestion. It leaves a warm, tingling feeling in his chest either way, and he saves the picture before replying with a series of hearts and a request for Charles to tell Nikolaj that it’s incredible.He shows it to Amy after breakfast, and she laughs as Jake remarks that Charles has probably talked so much about it that Nikolaj drew the picture just so he would stop.

“I have something for you, too,” she confesses, digging in her bag before pulling out a single white envelope. “A small thing, because I know you don’t like the day, but I wanted to get you something.”

The card has two cartoon elephants spraying hearts of water on it, and inside, there’s a gift card to his favorite sneakers store and a little message from Amy.

_Happy Father’s Day, babe. You’re going to be the best one, and both our baby and I know it._

_Love, your wife and your child_.

“Do you like it? I’m sorry it’s nothing big -”

Jake wraps her in a tight hug before she can say anything else. 

Another part of him wants to treat the day like he’s done any other year; ignore it, close his eyes and put away his phone so he doesn’t have to think about the text he’s not sending. He writes the message to Roger out this year as well, wonders if this will be the one, but the regret, the feeling that he doesn’t _mean it_ , arrives at once. He backspaces the words.

“Who are you texting? You look focused.” Luis Santiago slumps down on the grass next to Jake, jokefully leaning over his shoulder and causing Jake to quickly lock and pocket his phone. He’s followed a couple of Santiago brothers and kids down to the water near Luis’ house, and is watching a heated discussion unfold between Isaac, who’s helping his one-year-old daughter take stumbling steps into the water, and Simon, who’s waving his camera and muttering something inaudible before marching away. 

“Uh, no one.”

“Damn it. I made a bet with Christian I was going to catch you writing a cheesy message to Amy. Now I’m down ten dollars.”

“I... why ten dollars?”

Luis shrugs, and Jake almost thinks he’ll get an explanation before there’s a loud shriek from a child in the water and Luis jumps up, separating his seven-year-old twins before one pushes the other into the water. 

“That was fast,” Jake comments, and Luis grins.

“You learn. I’ve got seventeen years of practice down, so it’s a breeze at this point.”

“Huh.” 

He thinks he hears another scream, and looks up, but this time it’s just four-year-old Isabel laughing as she splashes water on Christian. He’s playing with her while also keeping one eye focused on two-year-old Noah, who’s playing with a spade and bucket in the sand. Jake wonders if the split attention, the ability to be so focused on several people at once without a struggle, comes naturally with fatherhood, or if it’s something you have to practice, too. 

One-year-old Maisie decides she’s tired of the water, taking uneven steps towards the grass instead while Isaac watches her like a hawk. When she reaches the grass, she sits down and crawls instead, heading towards Jake until she reaches his feet. A pair of sandy, chubby hands claw at his sneakers.

“Pretty dope, huh? Might be a little too big for you, though,” he says, and Maisie gives him a wide-eyed stare as if she’s actually surprised. 

“Sorry, sorry, I’ll make her let go,” Isaac mumbles, separating his daughter from Jake’s shoe as she lets out another upset cry. “I thought it was _puppies_ that liked playing with shoes, but apparently it’s toddlers too.”

“It’s fine, she can play with it,” Jake offers, and Isaac gives him a look as if he’s said something insane. “But she, uh, maybe shouldn't. For hygienic reasons. Right.”

Luis snorts. Jake wishes it was socially acceptable to just ask the question weighing on his mind; whether they think he's going to be okay at this, whether they actually have confidence in his abilities as a future dad or if they’re secretly wishing Amy would have gone with someone else. Jake loves Amy’s brothers, and he thinks most of them love him, too - Julian very openly, David less so - but he doesn’t know them well enough to ask the questions he desperately wants answers to. He wants to know whether they were scared, too, if they had the same overwhelming feeling and worried it wouldn’t go away.

Before he can form the words in his head, Maisie tears herself free from Isaac’s arms again, crawling onto Jake’s lap with surprising speed and laughing as she sits down, warm and heavier than he’d thought. She reaches for the grass next to them, pulling up a fistful of dry grass and leaves, and stretches her hand out to him with a pleased smile.

“For me?” He asks, all exaggerated enthusiasm, and Maisie stretches her hand further, almost shoving the gift in his face. “Aww, thanks. You really didn’t have to.”

“It’s her new thing,” Isaac grins. “She gives gifts. They’re usually not very _good_ gifts - she’s broken into the diaper pail a couple times - but the act is sweet.”

Jake squeezes the leaves in his palm as Maisie seems to make herself comfortable in his lap, still giving the shoes a longing glare from a distance. He feels an odd sense of pride over the fact that she sits there, completely unafraid, and as he lifts her slightly with his knees before lowering them down like she’s on a carousel and she laughs the kind of candid, sheer laughter only a child can manage, he wonders if he’ll be doing the same thing to his own kid in one or two years time. It’s hard to imagine anything sounding sweeter than Maisie’s genuine enthusiasm, but Jake thinks his own son or daughter could achieve it. He adds a bit of a sound effect, a swooping noise as he moves his knees up and down, and the laughter gets even louder. 

“Natural talent,” Luis says with a quick pat on his back. Jake blushes.

“Actually, I -”

He’s interrupted by another loud shriek and a splash. When he looks up, he sees Simon holding his camera looking mighty pleased while Isabel is on her stomach in the water, making a noise somewhere between crying and laughing.

“Simon, for the love of god, _stop_ filming,” Jake hears Christian wheeze.

“I am _making content_!”

“I thought you were a gossip channel -”

“First of all, it’s called _commentary_! Second, I am _branching out_!”

“Guys, guys,” Luis tries to overvoice them. “Maybe focus on the child that’s crying?”

“Oh god, fuck, right…”

Jake lifts his knees again to entertain the oblivious one-year-old, and draws a sigh of relief that at least, not every bit of parenthood seems to come naturally to everyone else all the time either. 

Like most days he’s spent in the company of his wife’s family with partners and kids included, Jake’s not certain where the day goes. A bright and sunny afternoon becomes a lukewarm summer’s evening, and Camila makes tea for everyone as the younger kids go to bed one by one. The very youngest addition to the Santiago family, one-month-old Timothy, is wide awake for the first time that day, and Christian gives him over to Amy. She doesn't flinch, Jake notes. He's seen her hold babies before, but it feels special in another way to watch her make funny faces to the infant, knowing that in just a few months time, that will be his everyday view. Amy doesn't even seem nervous when the kid starts whimpering, just rocks him until he’s calm again. Timothy closes his eyes, and Amy gently runs her hand over the tufts of dark hair on his head, booping his nose and laughing as the kid scrunches his face. 

“He's adorable,” she says. Jake wonders if they're thinking the same thing; that no matter how cute that baby is, their own will be cuter. “Do you want to hold him, Jake?”

“Don't even think about saying no,” Julian interjects from across the table. “We’ve _got_ to see those hot dad vibes in action! The people have been deprived for too long -”

Amy gives her older brother a warning glare, which he appears gladly oblivious too. Jake holds his arms out to take the baby before anyone can say anything else. 

Timothy is heavier than Jake thought he’d be, but he still feels scarily light, and Jake adjusts his position to make sure he's sitting straight. The baby yawns, stretching his little fist out. Jake makes a bro-fist with it. He gets no reaction, but at least Timothy doesn't cry, so he figures that's as close to success as it gets with a newborn. They're pretty useless for the first couple of months, he remembers Gina telling him during a less-than-sober heart-to-heart when she stopped by Shaw’s last week. Watching Timothy’s uncoordinated movements, and the seemingly random grimaces, Jake’s prepared to agree. Still, he can't shake the feeling of longing that comes when he looks at this baby - the feeling that his _own_ baby will be the best and most perfect useless miniature human to ever exist. It makes him excited. Not enough to completely choke his countless fears and worries about fatherhood, but enough to make them calm down.

“We're all going to that sex reveal party in a couple weeks, right?” Julian’s voice makes Jake look up and around at the others, some of which, including Luis and Tony, nod, and some, including Camila and David, shake their head. “Mom? Come on, don't you wanna see if it's possible to do a non-problematic gender reveal? I’ve heard it's like a double rainbow.” 

“Victor and I are away golfing that weekend.” Camila takes a sip of her tea and laughs. “Plus, I already know it will be a boy.”

Jake can feel his cheeks heating again as the opinions roll in. It feels personal, somehow, to hear other people discuss a person that _he_ is raising. He looks back at Timothy instead and makes a funny face at him, but the baby seems unaffected. 

“I think you're wrong,” says Julian. “Totally a girl. Doesn't Jake have a bunch of half-sisters?”

“Bunch of half-brothers, too,” he mumbles.

“It doesn't matter what they are,” says Amy, saving him from the conversation topic of his broken family. Jake wants to kiss her, but settles for a slight thankful smile. “Really, we’re just having a party to celebrate how excited we are to meet them and get to learn everything about them.”

“You could have that without bringing genitals into it, couldn’t you?”

“I _know_ , Julian, but as much as I’d love to, I don't have the time to design a new type of party. Anyway, mom, do you think you could send me some good cake recipes? I need to finish planning the food.”

“Oh no, you are not baking for that thing,” Julian snorts. “I’m not coming if I’m getting poisoned. Jake, how good are you in the kitchen?”

“Maybe we should just buy something from the bakery,” he grimaces, looking to Amy, who rolls her eyes but nods.

“Are Roger and Karen coming to the party, Jake?” Camila asks the question directly to him, her eyes piercing him.

“I haven't invited them yet,” he confesses. “I will, though.”

Timothy’s low grunting noises transform into a cry at that moment, saving Jake from the rest of the conversation as he gives the baby back to Christian who disappears into the house with him.

Jake has told his mom that she's about to be a grandmother. He did it when he visited for dinner a couple of weeks ago, wanting to tell her in person. It was worth it just for hearing her gasp as he pulled out the sonogram from his pocket, and for the long hug she gave him as she told him how happy she was, how certain she was that he and Amy would make incredible parents. 

He hasn't talked to his dad about it, though. He cheated his way out of it and asked his mom to do it for him, and then he tried not to feel upset when there was no text the same evening. The text came a few days later, first congratulating him on his birthday even though there was two weeks left, and then with a final line that left him feeling pleasantly warm inside. 

_Heard you're having a baby. Congratulations, son._

Jake couldn't remember the last time his dad had texted him to say _congratulations_ about anything before. It had left him feeling weird but proud, certain that they must be doing better than ever. Still, it's sensitive. Jake can't shake the feeling that he needs to _really_ talk about it, have a proper chat with _his_ father about becoming a father himself, but talking about it with Roger means they'll have to address all of the things he's tried so hard to suppress. The cheating, the forgetting, the ignoring. The total lack of interest in being a present father. The fear that it’ll somehow have been passed down to him, and he’ll inevitably become the bad dad he’s so afraid of being. He doesn't want to talk about it, but at the same time, he really does.

Before he can change his mind, he pulls out his phone from his pocket and writes a quick text to his dad.

_Want to get a drink sometime soon?_

After a little bit of doubt, he pushes through, and adds another sentence.

_Happy Father's Day, by the way_.

He presses send and puts his phone back before he can regret it.

“You okay?” Amy leans her head on his shoulder.

“ Yeah,” he nods, resting his arm around her. “You?”

“Tired,” she mumbles, her new signature phrase.

“We can go inside if you want.”

“In a while,” she sighs. “It's nice.”

It is nice. Jake thinks he could stay here with her, enjoying the cool summer evening air relieving them after a sunny day's heat, forever. He kisses the top of her head, modest with his affection with her family around, but still feels her smile into his shoulder. She holds his hand in hers, resting it carefully on top of the bump underneath her sky-blue floral dress, and although there are people around, for a second it feels like just them.

“Lovebirds,” Luis teases them.

“Oh, Luis,” Julian grins. “I’m sure they go much worse than that.”

“Okay, let's leave now,” Amy mutters, but not before giving Julian a harsh glare that he doesn’t seem to notice. 

Even if she hadn’t told him, Jake can tell that Amy’s tired as they try to share floor space while brushing their teeth in the cramped guest bathroom. Her sentences are shorter, her movements slower as she lays down on the mattress, and he regrets not spending more time with her earlier today. 

“Hard day?” He asks as she yawns, adjusting the blanket so it covers them both. If he knows her right, she'll end up stealing it for most of the night and deny it in the morning, but she’ll look so cute all rolled up in it that he won't have the heart to say anything. 

“I need to start taking a nap in the middle of the day,” she sighs. “I can't believe I’m turning into Hitchcock or Scully. All I want to do is eat and nap.”

“I guess I can see it,” he pretends to narrow his eyes, and Amy shoves his shoulder. “You’re a little hotter, maybe.”

“Jerk,” she grunts. “Other than that - yeah, it's been a good day. You?”

Jake thinks of the giftcard, the pancakes, Maisie’s infectious laughter and baby Timothy's tiny double chin. “It’s been a good day.”

“An okay Father’s Day?”

“I guess.” He lets his thumb trail along her forehead, move down her nose, stroke her lips before his hand moves to the bump. “I’m sure next year will be even better, though. Although I’m a bit worried about the homemade pancakes.”

“I can make pancakes,” she huffs.

“With eggshells in them and raisins instead of chocolate chips?”

“That was one time!”

“Yeah, and it broke my heart, Santiago! I’ll never trust your pancakes again.”

“You were the one who ate all the chocolate chips for movie night because we were out of sour straws and you didn’t want to go to the store.”

“Way to blame the victim,” he says, and she rolls her eyes before closing them.

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Yeah, but you love me.” 

Amy sighs, smiling as she opens her eyes again. “You’re ridiculous, and I love you.”

He leans in for a kiss and she welcomes it, lips moving languidly with his, minty toothpaste breaths exchanged. It’s interrupted all too suddenly when Amy pulls back, a focused crease on her forehead and running her hand just below her belly button.

“I think I feel the baby again,” she says before Jake can ask if something’s wrong. “Maybe you can feel it too, right there, if you focus -”

He’s about to protest, say he _is_ focused, but when he opens his mouth, it stays in a gasp as something shifts underneath his palm. Short, brief little puffs, first two in quick succession and then another one, touching him through layers of skin, making their presence known.

“Woah,” he says, losing the words. “That’s -”

“Magical,” she fills in.

“I was going to say _super_ weird, but that works, too.”

Amy giggles. “Kind of, right? I mean, it’s the coolest thing ever, but it’s freaky.”

“You just described all of pregnancy,” he grins. His hand is still pressed to the same spot, trying to pick up on it again. 

Her smile gets wider for a second. “You know you’re going to make an amazing dad, right?”

“Guess you’re going to have to start planning for next year right away,” he jokes, trying to hide the happy tears sneaking up on him. He doesn’t know how pregnancy hormones work when you’re not the pregnant one, but right now, he’d very much like to blame them. 

“I will,” she says. “I’ll just get some sleep first.”

“Good night, Ames,” he tells her, moving the hand still on her bump from side to side. “Good night to you too, peanut. Give your mom some rest.”

Amy smirks, but doesn’t say anything else, and Jake decides to give her a proper chance to fall asleep even as he itches to keep talking to her. 

He watches her instead, waiting until he’s sure her breathing’s slowed, until he can tell she’s not moving too much. 

When her mouth falls open and she lets out the cutest of little snores, he reaches for his phone, lowering the brightness of the screen and turning his back to her to shield her. His heart skips a beat when he finds that his dad has answered the text from earlier.

_Drink sounds good._

A minute later, another.

_Thanks, son._

It feels strange to read, but not in an unpleasant way - just new. A relationship that’s far from healed, but one that’s slowly finding its way, heading towards a brighter future. 

It feels good, even. 

Jake sends a thumbs up back, locks his phone, and turns towards Amy again so he can fall asleep.


	3. june 20th, 2021

**june 20th, 2021**

On Jake’s first proper Father’s Day, Mac does the impossible.

He sleeps _through the night_. 

And sure, it's something Jake has read that many eight-month-old’s are able to do, and sure, it's happened two or three times before, but it's still a rare enough event for it to completely throw his parents off their rhythm. When the telltale whimpers start sounding from their son’s crib at seven-thirty in the morning, the next thing Jake hears is his wife’s cursing.

“ _Fuck_ ,” she says, and when Jake stirs to get Mac before the whimpers become ear-piercing cries, she quickly shakes her head at him. “No, go back to sleep, I was supposed to wake you with breakfast after I’d gotten up with Mac - now the schedule’s all wrong - damn it…” She lifts up Mac into her arms, and Jake almost laughs at how quickly her voice changes, all its tension vanishing when Mac’s chubby arms try to reach around her chest, overjoyed to see her. 

“Hi, baby, were you asleep for the whole night all of a sudden? On the one morning I’d planned for us to get up early so we could make daddy breakfast? Were you?” She tickles his tummy through the pajamas, eliciting the sweetest of giggles. “Yeah, you were!”

“What’s this I’m hearing about breakfast in bed?”

“Well, I was expecting this little guy to wake up at five for a feed like he usually does, so I could get up and prepare a Father’s Day breakfast for us while he slept his last stretch. But that’s not going to work now.” Amy sighs, sitting down on the bed and adjusting the pillows behind her back. “Damn it.”

“Late breakfast is not a catastrophe, Ames.” He reaches up, moving her ponytail from her shoulder to her neck before Mac’s curious fingers can find it and earning himself a grateful smile. “Relax.”

“I know,” she mumbles. “I just wanted it to be perfect. It’s already falling through.”

“It’s not falling through because we got to _sleep in_. We can just buy breakfast from the bakery, right?”

“But I wanted to show off my pancake skills - I spent my whole day off last week practicing -”

“Was that the day when I came home and the apartment smelled mysteriously like smoke?”

“I wanted to at least _try_.”

She still looks disappointed, frowning as she stares out into space. Amy’s fiery passion for schedules and organization frequently comes head-to-head with the impossibility of predicting their son’s next move; Mac is usually crowned winner. Amy will claim it drives her crazy, but then their son will give her one of his golden smiles while stretching his arms out like he's reaching for her, and he’ll be instantly forgiven until the next time. 

This time is no exception - the sweet sound of Mac's snuffles as he eats, combined with his hand clutching around Amy's finger as she offers it, has the smile returning to her lips in no time. 

“First-world problems, I guess,” she says. “You're right. Bakery breakfast sounds good too.”

“I’m always right, and I know.”

Amy rolls her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Happy Father's Day, Jake.”

It's his first real Father's Day. Jake finds it hard to believe how fast the last eight months have gone, because it feels like Mac’s been here forever. Likewise, it makes him feel like he's been a dad forever, or at least long enough to make everything before it feel insignificant. 

He talked about it with Charles at Shaw’s yesterday. They were having a few beers to celebrate Father's Eve (which Charles claimed was definitely a thing). 

When Charles first adopted Nikolaj, Jake had struggled to understand how his friend’s life could have changed so much - but he gets it now. He can no longer remember the last time he said yes to a spontaneous hangout at Shaw’s, or an extra shift he didn’t absolutely have to take. There's always an awareness that every moment he spends somewhere else is precious time away from his son and his wife, and it always feels just that little bit wrong. 

“Yep, that’s part of it,” Charles had nodded when Jake told him about it yesterday. “I’m jealous of every single one of Niko’s teachers.”

“Really? It doesn’t get better?”

Charles shrugged. “No. You get used to it, though. Don’t worry - it just means you’re a good dad. Which, for the record, I was the first one to know you would be.” 

“I’ll mention you in my speech if I ever win prizes,” he’d said, raising his beer bottle in a toast. “Also, is it okay if I go home after this drink? If I leave in ten minutes I might make it for bedtime, and we’ve started reading him books every night, and it’s the most adorable thing. Wait, I’m pretty sure I have a video...”

If someone had told Jake a few years ago that one day, he’d be rushing home from Shaw’s at seven-thirty p.m. just so he’d have the chance to rock a rose-cheeked baby in panda-print pajamas to sleep for the night, he would have laughed in their face. Now, it’s everything that matters. 

Another fact that would have shocked him is the fact that he’s a morning person now. Maybe not when they begin before five a.m., or when Mac’s had six wake-ups in one night, or that one time they were out of coffee and Jake actually started crying; but these mornings, when they’ve all gotten a few good hours of sleep, there’s nothing to rush to and he can wake up slowly to the soft sounds of Mac nursing - it’s easily one of his favorite parts of the day. 

“It’s supposed to be sunny all day,” Amy notes, checking the weather on her phone with her free hand. “We could buy food from the bakery and have a picnic outside? A Father's Day picnic, instead of brunch at home?”

“Picnic sounds perfect.”

“Sorry you didn't get pancakes in bed,” she sighs, clasping her bra together again when Mac starts to pull away. “At least let me make you coffee?”

“If you insist,” he winks, grimacing when Mac crawls over to him and puts his hands over Jake’s nose and mouth. “Mac and I will just hang out here,” he tries to say, but it comes out muffled. 

Amy laughs. “I’ll be back in five.”

She disappears out the door just as Mac lets go of his face, crawling with dangerous speed towards the edge of the bed before Jake catches him and places him back in the middle. Crawling is Mac’s new favourite thing since a month ago, tied only with food, snuggles and for some reason, remote controls (sometimes Jake wonders why they buy their kid toys in the first place). It’s come with a sudden need for them to baby-proof their apartment even further, finely tuned reflexes constantly working on stopping the child from getting himself hurt, and a glimmering, incomparable joy felt every time Jake sees his son light up with pride as he crawls towards him or Amy while they cheer him on. 

It’s gone so fast, Jake thinks. It seems like only yesterday they brought a tiny and helpless bundle home from the hospital, placed him in the babynest on their bed and then laid next to him for an hour just watching him breathe. They’d been awestruck, so deeply in love already, and a little bit terrified. 

_Your son is going to love you_ , Roger had said after the disastrous sex reveal party, adding to the chorus of what Amy and Charles were already telling him. It had meant a lot to hear, especially so from him, but in the end, there was only one person who could truly convince Jake. 

He’d felt it the first time he’d tried to bottle-feed Mac, practicing with him from early on so there wouldn’t be any difficulties when Amy had to go back to work. Mac had been skeptical at first, whimpering in protest when Jake teased his lips with the plastic nipple, but then he’d had an idea. After taking off his shirt, he’d tried the same thing again, and this time had been a success. Mac swallowed everything in the bottle, keeping eye contact throughout, and suddenly Jake had understood every word he’d read about how feeding - in any form - served as a bonding experience for both parent and child. He’d made sure to do at least one bottle-feeding per day after that.

He’d felt it again the first time Mac got sick, running a mild fever after getting his two-month shots and being near inconsolable for the rest of the night. Eventually, after two hours of screaming until he was red in the face, he’d fallen asleep on Jake’s chest in the middle of a cry and slept like that for three hours straight. Jake hadn’t even dared moving, just let his son sleep there like a living heating pad until he felt better. 

Most of all, though, he’d felt it the first time his son laughed at him. Mac had been three months old at that point, and the laughter had been prompted by something as simple as Jake singing along to Taylor Swift while making coffee. Mac had been watching him while bouncing along in his babysitter, content and quiet until Jake had tried and spectacularly failed to hit the right notes in _Cruel Summer_. The tones of that pure baby laughter, directed at _him_ , had been all Jake needed to feel certain that his son did, indeed, love him.

He worried whether he’d really be good at this, if he would break the infamous Peralta curse. Some days he still does. Parenthood is tougher than he’d thought, and when Mac starts crying after Jake has stopped him from crawling off the side of the bed for the third time, it's easy to feel like the worst parent in the world. But then he pulls out one of his secret tricks, putting Mac in his lap and pulling up a clip from some hysterical baby tv show that’s constantly bookmarked on his phone now, and ten seconds later all peace is restored as Mac giggles at the screen. Jake takes a moment to just breathe in the scent of his son’s neck, playing with the curls in his hair that have truly started to come in now. 

He’ll never do everything completely right, but for these moments, when everything’s calm and his son is content and happy with him, Jake thinks that he must at least be doing okay. One thing is for certain; he wouldn’t give this up for anything.

Going out with a baby takes four times as long as it did before a baby. Jake used to think _he_ was their biggest problem in the mornings, but he can't even begin to compare to their son. Before they're on their way to the park, they've gone through two outfit changes on Mac and one outfit change on Jake, checked the diaper bag three times to make sure they're not out of baby wipes again, and comforted their son who scared himself by crawling underneath the table and getting confused by the chair legs when his parents looked away for two seconds. They’ve packed food for Mac, sun screen, baby cutlery, a picnic blanket, warm shirts for everyone and extra toys for their son, and they're just going _ten minutes away_. 

“You know we can just go back home if we forget something, right?” Jake reminds Amy as she goes through the contents of the diaper bag a fourth time.

“You want to roll a screaming and overtired child home in the stroller while he refuses to fall asleep because we forgot his elephant blankie, be my guest.”

She's right, so Jake shuts up and helps her pack instead.

It takes them an hour, but they make it outside and to the bakery, where Mac charms everyone in line by flashing his sunniest smile and watching his surroundings with so much curiosity he would have climbed out of his seat if he could. Nothing seems boring to an eight-month-old, and the world is always wondrous and full of things to discover. It’s as beautiful to witness as it can be exhausting, but most days, Jake wishes he had more of that boundless excitement himself. There is something so pure about the way Mac lights up when a yellow taxi drives past them on the street, when he spots a teenager riding on an electric scooter, when they get to the park and spot a few kids playing frisbee while a small dog runs around trying to catch it. It's the notion that everything around us is a little bit magical, and that kids seem to remember it while adults so often forget. Jake tries to remember the beauty of it two minutes into the picnic as he cleans out Mac’s mouth after the kid tried to eat a leaf.

The takeaway coffee has already cooled off when they can sit down long enough to drink it, but even lukewarm coffee is a luxury to a parent, and Jake swallows his in big gulps anyway. Keeping the BLT away from Mac’s reaching hands proves a challenge at first, but then Amy brings out the crinkling baby book that never fails to distract their son for a few minutes, and it buys them just enough time to both finish their sandwiches. Most things are a puzzle these days, sometimes including feeding themselves. Jake still wouldn’t want to do it with anyone else.

“I used to jog in this park before.” Amy takes the last bite of her sandwich and wipes away a bit of drool from Mac’s chin with the bib. “When we followed that exercise regimen while trying to get pregnant, this is where I would go for my morning runs. God, I hated them.” She shudders. “I would always meet these parents that were out walking their babies in strollers, and I’d try to smile at them, but on the inside, I’d feel so jealous.”

“Oh, yeah. I’m so glad I don’t have to exercise anymore.” Jake grabs one of the glazed donut-holes they treated themselves to, swallowing it in two quick bites before Mac spots it. “It was the _worst._ ”

Amy opens her mouth to protest, but closes it again, shaking her head. “There were days when it made me so angry. Not at the parents, I wasn’t _that_ crazy - okay, I almost was - but at everything. How there could be all these people around me with kids, everywhere I looked, and somehow we couldn’t have them. I just wanted to walk around with a crying baby, too, because it would be _my_ crying baby.”

“And you got to do that in the end,” he says. They’ve both walked around this park with Mac in the stroller, lap after lap around the jogging trail to get their son to sleep. 

“Yeah,” she nods, running her hand through Mac’s hair and smiling wide at him when he looks up at her. “I did.”

They don’t talk about it a ton. The fertility journey was largely pushed to the back of their minds once they got that positive test and first ultrasound picture, even more so with their son’s birth. There’s no time to dwell on the past when the present demands their constant attention, and although their relationship has been through worse hardships, the memory of that time is not a cherished one. Jake tries not to think about it in other contexts than to remind himself of how lucky they were. He wonders if it’s the same for Amy, or if it’s more present for her. He’s never asked, he realizes.

“Do you think about it a lot?”

She shakes her head again. “Sometimes. Never for long. I worry, a bit. I wonder what will happen if we try to have a second baby. If it’ll be the same, or worse, or if it’ll even work at all.” Mac crawls onto her lap at that, and she hugs her arms around him. “But I don’t think we’re ready for that yet, are we? One’s plenty for now. Right, Macaroon?”

“Definitely,” Jake nods. “But maybe in a year, right?”

She smiles. “Maybe in a year.”

He wants to say something cheesy, kiss her and tell her how happy he is to make plans for the future with her, but Mac chooses that exact moment to squirm out of Amy’s arms and speed-crawl across the blanket onto the grass. Jake catches him just before he’s out of arm’s reach, and Mac whines in protest, but Amy laughs.

“I gotta say, your dad-reflexes get more impressive by the day.”

“I _know,_ right? I should be in a talent show.”

“Babe, you really shouldn’t.”

“Are you worried I’d become too famous and leave my family to live a luxury bachelor life? Because that would never happen, I promise.”

“Yep. Let’s say that’s what I’m most worried about.”

Jake’s not sure what she means. When it comes to his confidence in his own entertainment skills, it’s never been better, and it’s all thanks to his most enthusiastic fan. Mac gets fed a squeezy pouch with fruit and vegetables for a snack, and Jake does some of his best airplane noises so he’ll open his mouth for the spoon, making the kid giggle so hard he almost spits the food back out again. When he’s done, Jake places an empty plastic water cup on top of his son’s head, watching Mac laugh as it inevitably wiggles and falls off, landing in front of him. Then he does the same thing on his own head, actually balancing it for a moment for the tension, and Mac laughs even harder when it drops. 

Jake is amazed by how much better fatherhood has gotten with time. It was always the most amazing thing to ever happen to him, but it was so different when his son was a newborn. Mac was rarely awake for the first weeks, and when he was, he was either stuck to Amy for feeding or crying because he was overtired or needed his diaper changed. Jake always loved his son, but for the first month or so, he felt pretty useless around him. The daily attempts at bottle-feeding, and the precious times Mac fell asleep against his Jake’s chest as they walked around the apartment at night, had made up most of their bonding time together. It was still wonderful, and Jake can miss the time when Mac actually stayed where you put him, but in the end, it’s got nothing on what fatherhood is like at eight months in. Now, Mac interacts with them, laughing and smiling and trying to babble gibberish back at them when they talk to him. He’s always on the move, like he’s anxious to miss out on anything the world has to offer if he sits still for too long. Judging from the way he’s currently trying to use the tree next to them to get up to a standing position, Jake wonders how long they’ve got left until he’s walking. It’s clear that Mac has his own personality now, no longer just traces of it hidden in a newborn’s constant needs, and every day of fatherhood seems to bring a new adventure. 

There had been a time when Jake wasn’t sure if he wanted this. Little did he know, it’s better than anything he could have dreamt.

He gets a chance to check his phone when Mac starts to get overtired and Amy offers to walk around with him in the stroller for a while. Charles has sent him five texts wishing him a happy first father’s day, Karen has sent one, and there are some notifications from the _Santia-bro_ ’s group-chat on top of that, but the text that catches Jake’s attention aren’t from any of them. 

It’s from his own father.

_Happy Father’s Day_ , _son._

Jake just glares at the message. 

His own relationship with his father has changed drastically since he became a dad himself. For the most part, Jake understands Roger less. His heart hurts even as he drops off Mac with Karen or their nanny on the days both him and Amy are working, and every night when the kid goes to bed, it never takes long before Jake’s looking at pictures and videos on his phone again. He never understood why Roger left, but when Jake tries to picture a time in the future where _he_ would betray his family the way his own father did, he fails to see how anyone could do that to their child and live with themselves. He’s forgiven his dad, but he’ll never understand his choices.

In another way, their relationship is stronger. There’s still hurt between them, a passive sorrow that won’t ever fully heal, but there’s something new to bond over now. Jake sends his dad a thank you-text and includes a video from this morning of Mac crawling through the hallway, holding the stuffed toy plane Roger gave him in one fist.

_Mac & I wish you the same_, he writes. 

Roger may not have been a good dad, but he _is_ a good grandfather. From the first time Jake placed his then newborn son in his dad’s arms, whispering under his breath that if Roger ever did anything to hurt Mac, Jake would personally make sure to have him arrested - he’s been there. He’s visited, shown interest, and made a point to be home when Karen babysits so they can both spend time with their grandson. Sometimes, he brings home airplane-themed baby gifts from his travels. Jake had been surprised at first, but he's come to understand it. Mac is their peace-bringer. It's impossible to be angry around him, and he’s the one thing they can always talk about that won’t bring up hurt feelings. Roger always wants to know how Mac is doing, and Jake always wants to tell him. Their shared love for this child is the silent promise of a truce.

He may not yet be at the point where he wants to buy cards or gifts for his father each year, but the text doesn't hurt to send anymore, and the happy smiley-face and thumbs up he gets in reply to the video puts a smile on his face. 

The rest of the day flies by in the same pace days at home with an eight-month-old always seem to; scarily fast when you’re constantly busy. Mac tries the swing in the playground for the first time, and judging from the way he shouts with laughter as they push him between the two of them with minimal speed, it’s a success. They go grocery shopping in the afternoon and watch their son charm just about every other customer in the store as he smiles and points at everything he sees. They don't make it home in time for the afternoon nap, causing Mac to fall asleep in the car seat, so they drive the long way home just so he can sleep peacefully for a while longer even though the ice cream nearly melts in the car. In the evening, they take turns feeding him some oatmeal, which is another new favorite but still seems to end up mostly in his hair. Jake makes sure to snap a few shots of their little culinary enthusiast for Charles. Then he gets in the bathtub with his son, because he's all about multitasking these days, and the shouts of happiness from Mac as he uses his hands to splash water on himself are too cute to miss out on.

It all goes so fast, and suddenly, it's seven-thirty p.m. and time for the bedtime routine. Jake changes Mac into pajamas, then Amy reads the book while Mac looks up at her in fascination. After that, they nurse until he’s _almost_ falling asleep but not entirely, at which point Jake takes his son to rock him to sleep in his arms. They’ve tried more than a few methods to get their son to fall asleep independently, but in the end, this is what's easiest. Jake puts on some Taylor Swift, walking around the apartment or swaying back and forth with Mac in his arms as the child clings to him, either sucking on a pacifier or drooling all over Jake’s shirt before he drifts off to sleep like that. 

It's not the most recommended method, and he knows it bothers Amy to ignore the advice of her sacred research, but they’ve never gotten anything else to work. To be honest, Jake likes putting Mac to sleep like this. His son is already growing too fast. Jake fears the day this child won't need him like this anymore, but they're not there yet. Right now, swaying from side to side as he hums a familiar love song to the pajama-clad infant in his arms, Jake is everything his son needs. 

He knows he won't always be. One day, Mac will have his own friends and his own life and Jake won't be more than the embarrassing father that's in the way most of the time. All he can do is hope his son will know that whatever happens, he’ll always be there. He will always make time to talk to his son, and be there to help him with everything he can as long as it's not related to maths. (Though, come to think of it, Jake's pretty sure he’d learn the quadratic formula too if Mac requested it. Just not before insisting that he should ask Amy first.)

But Jake doesn't need any quadratic formulas to be enough for his son yet. All he needs is some back strength, some Taylor Swift ballads, and he gets this love in return. He gets to hold his son in his arms, feeling him grow heavier and more relaxed until he nods off with his head on Jake’s chest, and it's heaven, the very definition of love.

It takes about fifteen minutes - or four different Taylor ballads - before Jake is sure that Mac’s asleep. Sometimes he has to do this for up to thirty minutes before success, but his back always aches then, so when he can put Mac down in his cot after half of that, he considers it a victory. 

“Goodnight, Macaroon,” he whispers. “See you tomorrow. Or in a few hours, depending on what kind of night we have. But let’s aim for tomorrow, yeah? I know you can do it.” Jake squeezes his little hand, giving the still so adorable cheeks one last stroke before turning on the baby monitor and sneaking out of the bedroom.

Amy’s already started eating her pizza when Jake makes it to the living room. 

“Sorry,” she says with her mouth full, and he laughs. “I was hungry.”

“Romantic,” he teases her before sitting down on the couch, reaching for a paper towel and a slice of Meat Supreme (display temperature, obviously). He does eat a little bit healthier these days, wanting to live a long life for his son and all that, but Sunday nights are still for pizza and orange soda. He _is_ a hard-working parent, after all. 

Amy scrunches her nose. There's a bit of tomato sauce on the tip of it and Jake thinks about telling her, but it looks kind of cute. “We get to eat a meal together without anyone crying. Sounds pretty romantic to me. Do you want to watch a movie?”

“Nah,” he shrugs. “I kind of just want to be silent for a bit.”

“Oh thank god, me too.”

They rarely talk the first ten minutes after Mac goes to bed in the evening. Sometimes it takes twenty, even upwards to half an hour before they're ready for any sort of longer conversation. Jake never knew just how much you could appreciate silence before he became a parent, either. This night, it takes until both of them have finished their pizza, Amy has made herself a cup of green tea and Jake has refilled his glass of orange soda twice, before they're ready to exchange more than a few words.

“So, your first father's day,” Amy says when Jake moves closer to her, resting his head on her shoulder while he scrolls through his Instagram feed, making sure to like all the Santiago brothers' posts and the one Charles seems to have dedicated to him. He’ll read it properly later. “How did you find it?”

“Oh, hands down the best Father's Day I’ve ever been celebrated on.” He grins, thinking about the matching Die Hard-shirts for him and Mac and the one-night, parents-only, hotel stay his wife and son gifted him. “I loved it, babe. Thank you.”

She twists her head to kiss him on the cheek. “You deserved it.”

“It's crazy, though,” he mumbles. “Sometimes I still can't believe I'm a dad. Or that we're parents. I know it's kind of our whole life now, but it's weird to think about, isn't it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, seven years ago we were just colleagues. Six years ago we were trying to figure out how to be boyfriend and girlfriend. Five years ago I was in Florida, four years ago in prison...” Amy chews on her lip, looking away at the mention. He reaches for her left hand and drags his thumb over the stones in her engagement ring. “Three years ago we had just gotten married. Two years ago we had started trying. I know I’m bad with maths, but I’ll never understand how it can have been _that_ long, when it all still feels like it was just… yesterday.”

Amy squeezes his hand. “I guess it’s pretty weird when you put it that way. But I still think this is the best it’s ever been.”

Jake hums, letting go of her hand so he can cup her face with both. The first brush of his lips against hers is light, but she responds by pulling him in, her warm hands on the back of his head as she deepens the kiss. Capturing her bottom lip between his teeth, teasing it with his tongue, he lingers in it, savoring it to remember for all their stressed days when pecks on cheeks and squeezes of shoulders make up most of their physical intimacy. It’s different, a new thing to have that time together so limited, but it does make those moments all the more special when they happen. 

“For the record,” she says as they pull apart, “I’m still proud of our son to have you as a dad. Every day.”

Jake blushes. “Well, I try.”

“Don't be so humble.” Amy runs her fingers through his hair. It's getting long and he needs to cut it, he just never gets around to it for some reason. “You're amazing. And I know - _you_ know - that Mac feels the same.”

“Aww, you guys talk about me?”

“For sure. He tells me everything.”

“Damn it, I knew I shouldn't have told him about your birthday present,” he grins, making her laugh. “Thanks, Ames.”

“It's true,” she says, leaning her head on his shoulder and resting her hand over his heart. He clasps his hand over hers, holding it there. “I love you.”

“Love you, too.”

He closes his eyes, enjoying the rare moment of peace. The day’s exhaustion is starting to sink in, and he knows they should both go to sleep so they’re able to get up tomorrow morning, but the chance to just sit like this and talk, having a chance to just _be_ with his wife only the two of them, is even worth offering some sleep for. It's the perfect ending to a perfect day, and Jake couldn't be more content.

“For the record,” Amy mumbles after a moment, her thumb stroking his knuckles. “Next Father's Day, I _am_ making you pancakes. And Mac is helping.”

“Honestly, I feel like there's a chance he might be better at it than you.”

“You’ll never have any faith in my cooking skills, will you?”

“I know you too well,” he jokes. “And I don't care. It was still a perfect day. It always is, as long as I’m with you two.” Amy smiles, reaching up to peck his lips before settling her head back on his shoulder. “Anyway, I’m pretty sure that's my cheesiness quota for the day filled, so; you want to crash in bed and see if there's any chance of our son performing a miracle and sleeping through the night twice in a row?”

“Oh my god, I thought you’d never ask.”

The definition of romance has changed since they became parents, Jake thinks as they tiptoe into the bedroom and try to be as quiet and efficient in their routines as possible so Mac doesn’t wake up - but never before has every day of his life been filled with so much love.

~

**Author's Note:**

> some trivia about this fic:
> 
> \- i did math for this thing! you see, the trying fertility calendar starts in july, and based on the dates amy had written in that i managed to calculate that if her cycle's that regular, the fertility window before her july period would have started june 16th. a.k.a. on father's day.
> 
> \- the entire idea for this actually started with the image of jake goofing with mac while feeding him on a picnic.. then it got a lot longer.
> 
> \- this is the third fic i've written with julian and simon santiago as iconic santiago brother characters and i am OBSESSED with them both. i've missed them so much.
> 
> \- i was once told that i manage to pack in little lessons about pregnancy and babies in each fic i write and yeah, i see it, and i have no shame.  
> 
> 
> i have so many favorite parts in this it's impossible to mention them all. please feel free to tell me yours or just chat to me about jake and fatherhood in the comments. (i have them moderated but dw they'll be accepted)
> 
> i hope you guys are doing okay in this hell year. all the love. 💕


End file.
